Do you want more or less?

Do you want more or less?

It's a pretty interesting problem, I think. Of course not the problem alone, but with the context... If you own more, will you want more?

Several days earlier, a friend from Europe asked whether Chinese girls always want to marry someone who have to have car, house, credit card and so on. Do they make it a standard to choose husband? It's hard for me to answer this question. Even harder to defend for the Chinese girls.

I try to explain that the girl that a foreigner might meet would likely to be some ambitious girls from China. The reason is that most of the time only the ambitious Chinese girls would go aboard and the general girls stay where they were born. So as a result, the small part of the ambitious girls could not represent all the Chinese girls. OK. My friend might accept this explanation....

However, what I added after my last word and what my friend replied give me the reason to write this post. I said that as the foreigner might meet the Chinese girls who are in the universities, these girls have better abilities and they own more source than others. When someone own more, they often want even more. I even thought that it's natural. On the contrary, my friend said that's different in his homeland. When a girl, for example a well-educated girl, have more, she may want less because of this.

Actually, this problem is complicate. In my experience, most cases are that what I said just now. The ones who own more want more. Just a small number of people would be the case that when they own more they want less. But most of my experience was in my homeland. What's the case in the world? And why there's the difference.... Maybe we could know about it better later...

PS. Maybe I should added this link here as it's popular on digg.com. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22360651-1702,00.html
Maybe it's really a topic we have talked about for centuries.

You won't see it if you don't like it

It's true. You won't see it if you don't like it. The reason is not that even you look at it you choose to ignore it, but because you will find every means to get rid of it if you dislike it indeed. The result is that thing will not appear in the world again, that's why you won't see it.

Why I talk about this? There's a story. In somehow I investigated the "Web 2.0" concept last month. When I talked with some friends, some of them worried about the advertisements. If everyone uses RSS to read the web pages, then no one will visit the website. At present, the advertisement is one of the major revenues for the website. No one visits the web means that the ad-agencies will not pay the website. Then, will Web 2.0 kill most of the websites which depend on the advertisement? It seemed that their concerns were quite reasonable. I thought about it for a while, then I said that the websites could learn from the cable TV. They could provide free services to the public, with advertising in them. The high quality services are also provided, without advertising, but charge for some fee. I didn't expect this will evoke the panic. It seems that when comes to money/fee everyone will widen his/her eyes.

Why widen the eyes? They started to worry about the public website services will be mixed with all kind of advertising that they don't want to see. But, that's quite normal, right? On today's website, could you avoid yourself seeing that annoying advertising? If not, why do you keep dreaming "Web 2.0" should sweep them out completely? Actually, I thought Web 2.0 has already done this somehow. When you use RSS to subscribe some content, you will only read the summaries or the full articles you want in your RSS reader, no advertising.

On the other hand, the worry was not unreasonable. If everyone just subscribes the RSS and read the contents just in the RSS reader, how could the website get their income from advertisement? Will they embed the advertising into the RSS contents?

Maybe yes, maybe no. In my mind, at least two strategies exist. The first strategy, as the above mentioned, include some advertising in the RSS contents, provide the RSS without any charges. If the user want to read the plain contents without advertising, they could subscribe and pay for the ad-free RSS. The second strategy, the website would not earn the money from the ordinary users who don't want to pay. They just provide the services. And when the user want more than RSS contents, they could charge the user on different levels. As the famous saying, the 80% profits come from 20% clients; 20% profits come from 80% clients. If we choose to be the 80% ordinary clients, we don't have to worry about the advertising. The website would provide us the services for free. They would just need us to compose their hierarchy of clients. They would make money from the other 20% clients, or from other ways such as the co-operating companies or sponsors.

Viewed from the user's side, you won't see it if you don't like it. If the user don't want to see the advertising, he/she will try to find the ad-free website to read. If he/she could not find this kind, he might start thinking about pay some money to avoid the advertising. Or maybe he/she should give up surfing the network for this reason. Or, maybe he/she will set up a company to provide such free services without advertising.

Put the network aside, in the daily life sometimes we just complain something, but we never do something to avoid them. Why? Maybe in our mind we don't dislike them enough. When we see some negative phenomenons in the society, do we criticize it enough? Or do we do something concrete to prevent these phenomenons? Think it over how much you like it or how much you dislike it. Then let's do something for what we believe is right...

You won't see it if you don't like it. That depends on how much you dislike it. All on you.

Love and Share

In these days, I created another blog in Chinese. To communicate with my friends who do not like to read English, and to express something that I could not express well in English. The link is list on the right column. Or you can click here to visit my blog in Chinese.

I also built a site on Google Pages. A Site to present my home space (as MSN space? ^_^) on the network. You could also find the link on the right column or click here to visit my site.

I have used many services provided by Google. On that site, I wish to integrate them to share with public. Acutally, MSN space is great on some way. If you want, you can integrate the blog, music, photo, bookmark etc together on MSN Space to share with others. But its loading speed is rather slow, and currently their services are not abundant as Google is providing. I thought that maybe the reason is that Google started from network, so almost all the services of Google concern much on sharing.

Then, why I mentioned these? Why I built the blogs and the site? Yes, to study, to share, to communicate. Yes, that's why I do it. In this way. So, it's natural that I will prefer Google services for sharing. I took notes into Google Notebooks when I was surfing the web or reading books and articles, I shared them. I used Google Reader to read news and updates of blogs, I shared the good articles. I also wish to develop my own thinking, write them in my blogs, to share them. I am going to take this heart to share more. Actually I've got a plan.

I also wish to encourage every guest who visit my site to share more. You see, to share is very easy and simple. And if you like something, you love something, why not let more and more people to like it, to love it? You can share something with somebody because you cherish it; or you can share something with somebody because you love him/her. I thought it's love that make sharing happen.